Pixels:Patriarchy Remains Even in the Face of Destruction

In the summer of 2015 Adam Sandler through his production company Happy Madison, made a movie based on video games. With some of the most popular video games of all time being sexist (Tomb Raider and Dead or Alive series) Sandler could have chosen the higher road and taken the movie in a more positive direction. Instead he chose the far easier and misogynistic path, Sandler and his crew chose to continue the trend of sexism in video games with their film Pixels. Pixels presents a patriarchal society where women are sex objects, who have no substance and little dialogue. Pixels makes out an ideal patriarchal society where a woman's only purpose is to please a man.


In Pixels, the world is invaded by aliens who use and replicate video game characters to take over the world. The three main characters, Sam Brenner (Sandler), Ludlow Lamonsoff (Gad) and Will Cooper (James), are tasked with using their past video game skills to defeat these aliens. With an uninspired plot and even worse execution the true mediocrity of the film lies with its treatment of its female characters. Ludlow Lamonsoff throughout the whole film is obsessed with an overly sexualized video game heroine, Lady Lisa (Benson). When the aliens form a replica of her, she is portrayed as a sexy and scantily clothed woman, despite being based off a pixelated game. Lady Lisa is the only character, based on a video game, in the entire film to appear non-pixelated. When Lamonsoff finally encounters Lady Lisa, they almost instantaneously hit it off and form a relationship that at the end of this film leads to marriage. Lady Lisa never says a word to Lamonsoff, because she is mute. This makes Lady Lisa the ultimate fantasy and sex object. Lamonsoff never learns that women are more than sexual fantasies, neither do any of the other male characters. Peter Dinklage plays another main character in the film, who has an obsession with having a threesome with Martha Stewart and Serena Williams. Serena ends up going on a date with Dinklage's character because she was promised an island if she did. This scene turns a twenty-three time Grand Slam champion into a trophy. This movie manages to objectify or ridicule every woman that steps on the screen.


Despite being another sexist and blatant cash grab film by Sandler and his crew, the movie does show a few upsides to the current standing of American ideology.The film did not do to well opening weekend at the box office. Not only are audiences tired of Sandler´s constant stream of terrible comedies, they would rather see more gender neutral movies with strong female and male characters i.e The Hunger Games Series. Though the script, characters and acting in Pixels are all quite poor, the film succeeds in one aspect, opening the eyes of the people to sexism that plagues today's media. Hopefully this movie will be the beginning of the end for these flagrantly sexist and objectifying movies.